Schooling the gaze: Industry and nation-building in Luxembourgish landscape-writing, 1900 1940

This paper investigates the role of industry in the invention of a national landscape in Luxembourg between 1900 and 1940. Luxembourg is a significant case study when it comes to the construction of national identity, because it gained its independence (1890) not through revolution but was attributed the status of nationhood by the decision of the major European political powers. The period under investigation is also characterised by immense industrial expansion: in the course of a few decades, Luxembourg moved from a rural subordinate state to a major economic power. Focusing on landscape-writings addressed to a native audience, this paper examines the nexus of the economy, the arts and politics, arguing that writers integrated representations of industrial processes into the discourse of national identity in order to assert Luxembourg’s competence and ‘right to life’.